Considering the AI weaknesses for your computer opponents, I would suggest at minimum one player take France and the other Britain. Combos could then be France+Turkey or France+Spain on one side, and Britain+Russia or Britain+Austria on the other side?

Despite the AI issues, the computer-controlled players do provide certain elements of uncertainty for DOWs, control of minors, etc. You should be able to get a decent game out of one of the combos. I've been advocating for a long time the merits of small-group games with 2-4 human players rather than 'regular' pbem games with 7 human players. For this reason alone, AI improvements and enhancements for even those games with only a few AI opponents would be good. Hopefully we'll get there one of these days. Let us know how your game goes, post some AAR comments?

One very annoying thing I noticed about France as AI is that if you (Austria, Prussia, others) are knee deep in trouble waring against France you can usually just sue for an informal peace and then it is granted. Shortly after the AI will then declare war once again and this could in practice continue on and on. Very annoying.

I really wanted to play a two player game against France but it's AI is simply too weak.

Then there is the problem with Britain's AI. For some reason it believes that the best way to intervene in the mainland war is to send 1-2 corps to France and fight it out. The result is naturally that Britain is beat up severely.